They all whispered that it wouldn’t last. Her parents didn’t even come to the wedding as I was just a stranger to them, with no money and no plans. But I knew. I knew that what we had was real, that she was my heart and my future.

We planned the wedding on our own, young and eager but knowing so little about how things were done. It was small. No fancy venue, no expensive decorations, just a chapel and the few friends who believed in us. Darlene wore a simple white dress her aunt had given her, and I wore a suit I borrowed from a cousin. We didn’t have much, but we had everything we needed in each other. And so, we stood together, and the sun shone on us that day. And they were wrong—it did last. Thirty-five years of love, six children, five grandchildren, and a lifetime of memories.

In the end, when her time came, I was right there, holding her hand, with our children surrounding us in the home we built together. Not everyone gets to live a love story like ours. But we did. This was us

On Valentine’s Day, I would visit her at the cemetery with roses, as always. I’d give her what I always tried to—my heart, my devotion, and the promise that even after all this time, I would choose her again, every single day.

In loving memory of you, Darlene.

It wasn’t supposed to be this way. That’s what I kept telling myself, over and over, as I stood there in the small cemetery, clutching the bouquet of roses. The wind tugged at my coat, sending a chill through my bones. I had visited every year, without fail, always on Valentine’s Day, bringing her roses just like I promised. But today… today felt different. It wasn’t just the cold that made my breath catch in my chest. There was something heavier, something I couldn’t shake.

I knelt down, placing the roses gently at the foot of the headstone. The stone was still as smooth as the day it was placed, her name etched in it, sharp and clear. Darlene. She had been everything to me, and still, every year, I felt a piece of her in the breeze, in the soft earth beneath me.

There was a weight in the air I couldn’t escape. A sense of change that I couldn’t ignore any longer.

After Darlene passed, I stayed in the house we had built. I didn’t want to leave. It was all I had left of her. But time, as it always does, had a way of moving forward. The kids had their own lives now. And while I was proud of them—each one of them—something had shifted in me. I wasn’t the same man I used to be. I was alone. And not in the way that felt comforting. Alone in a way that made me question everything I thought I knew about life, about love, about who I was without Darlene by my side.